The former Federal Reserve chairman gave a blistering rebuke to the Republican presidential candidate on Wednesday, saying Paul’s proposed bill to audit the central bank is misleading.

“This is very deceptive — this bill is very deceptively titled,” Bernanke said during a discussion at Nasdaq’s Times Square headquarters to promote his new book, “The Courage to Act.”

Bernanke suggested the bill wasn’t about increasing transparency so much as giving lawmakers more control over the Fed and its monetary policies.

“You’re basically saying that Congress should run monetary policy,” he said. “I always like to say, if you love the way they’re managing fiscal policy, let them run monetary policy.”

Bernanke, 61, oversaw the Fed during the financial crisis, which the central bank sought to counter with record low interest rates and a controversial bond-buying program, known as quantitative easing.

The explosion in the Fed’s holdings, coupled with popular outrage over Wall Street misdeeds that contributed to the crisis, have led politicians to make the central bank a target.

Paul (R-Ky.) introduced his Federal Reserve Transparency Act, also known as the “Audit the Fed” bill, in the Senate earlier this year. That led Bernanke and other opponents to declare that the Fed, which has a roughly $4 trillion balance sheet, is already audited.

Bernanke, who has also bristled at suggestions that the central bank is opaque, insisted on Wednesday that the “financial books of the Fed are completely open.”